2dcloud: MariNaomi's Turning Japanese

Following up on my recent Minnesota post, let's take a look at one of Minneapolis's finest: 2dcloud. The publisher, Raighne Hogan, is a cartoonist in his own right, but he's made a splash thanks to his willingness to take risks with avant garde, eccentric and boundary-pushing comics. Hogan's put interesting work back in print, printed the work of locals, given homes to more-widely read cartoonists who needed a new publisher, published the work of emerging cartoonists and he's even gone the international route. At the moment, 2dcloud is running a kickstarter in an effort to support publishing some pretty remarkable books. First, here's a review of a recent publication.

MariNaomi's newest memoir, Turning Japanese, is on the one hand a chronological continuation of her first memoir, Kiss and Tell, as it picks up more-or-less right after the final relationship depicted in that book. On the other hand, it also has a good bit in common with her shorter works that were originally published on The Rumpus and later collected as Dragon's Breath And Other Stories. Turning Japanese is all about not just contradictions and opposites, but also about how someone can be and feel two things at once. In a society that privileges binary distinctions (and almost always creates a hierarchy based on those distinctions), MariNaomi's status as someone frequently in-between points out how simply living her life in certain places and spaces created a tension born from social mores being stretched. She's a person, not an accumulation of traits, and as such this book is about the thoughts and feelings that go into creating and presenting one's identity as well as exploring different aspects of one's roots. All of this is done with an absence of pretension and an emphasis on humor, and it's served to the reader in the form of both extended narratives and bite-sized vignettes.

Like Kiss and Tell, this book to a certain degree is the story of a relationship, this time with a man she called Giuseppe. Through him, she meets a friend who works as a hostess in a Japanese bar, a peculiar sort of job that required them to be extremely friendly bartenders, flirting with men and singing karaoke to create a particular kind of experience for their (mostly male) clientele. MariNaomi reveals that she's half-Japanese but can't really speak the language, a point of frustration for her. So she takes the job in the hopes that she'll be able to pick it up in an immersive environment and also finally get to experience Asian culture and people beyond Western stereotypes. In a series of amusing vignettes that reveal the backstories of the other young women working at the bar as well as the bar's owners, MariNaomi is quickly disappointed by the nature of her interactions with her customers, who range from indifferent to flirtatious to engaging in severe sexual harassment. What had begun as a lark and a genuine attempt at cultural outreach quickly became a job that relied on her deference to men and dependence on her looks and charm in order to please customers, which naturally severely rankled her feminist tendencies.

The most fascinating extended story from this part of the book was her description of her "regular" customer, Hitoshi. He took a shine to her and immediately wanted to shower her with money, compliments and even declarations of his love. Being the person she is, she felt guilty for accepting big tips because she felt she was leading him on, yet she couldn't quite manage to tell him she was engaged when she accepted a lunch date from him. That all led up to him offering her $20,000 to pay off he debts, only he wrote the "check" on a napkin. The idea of accepting this amount of money literally led her to experience her first panic attack. That particular page is illustrated quite differently than most of the rest of the book. MariNaomi usually prefers to use a highly stripped-down approach that employs a great deal of negative space, conveying only what is absolutely necessary in each panel for the reader to understand what's going on in a narrative sense as well as to understand what's going on in an emotional sense. MariNaomi will zoom in and out on faces, going from dots for eyes in a long or medium shot to a more detailed facial close-up that fades out almost everything else in the scene. On the panic attack page, virtually every every inch is taken up illustrating the feeling of panic: spiraling fear lines, eyeballs pulsating, her head exploding and her heart flying out of her mouth. It all kind of melts together as panel distinctions fall away. It curtly ends in the final panel which is more typically minimalist in its drawings and carefully defined with panel borders, when she narrates "Somehow I managed to keep it together".

When the outcome of that whole situation with Hitoshi ends with the whole napkin thing being a fake-out, it revealed that her attempts at empathy and human connection as a hostess were remarkably misplaced. It was a scenario where seemingly everyone else was trying to be someone else, and someone as sincere as MariNaomi presented herself was kind of an easy mark for the right sort of person--even as she had her guard up against creeps. When a different guy out-and-out gropes her, she quits but goes through weeks of agony surrounding digestive issues. She would have agonizing stomach cramps every time she ate something, followed by a panic attack. There's a great page where she was walking up Nob Hill in San Francisco and simply couldn't make it: her fiancee had to carry her up. The bottom panel forms a perspective triangle where we see the concerned faces of her parents forming the base of the triangle and the figure of Giuseppe carrying Mari forming the third point. MariNaomi was wise to leave this as a silent panel, letting the panel's composition speak for itself.

The punchline of that particular situation is that she eventually got better and finally got tested by a doctor, who revealed that she survived a severe case of salmonella. The panel where she and Giuseppe learn this is hilarious, as their eyes bulge out as though they were in a daily newspaper comic strip. That ends the first part of the book and includes an interlude that talks about her prior visits to Japan as well as visits from Japanese relatives. All of her attempts at connecting to her Japanese side in America had failed miserably, but she and her fiancee decided to visit Japan for three months, leading to the fascinating second half of the book, which is part travelogue, part documentation of an eroding relationship, and part spiritual journey. If the first half skipped forward in time in part to demonstrate the relative sameness of each day, then the second half skipped few details, especially at the beginning of the trip, when even trying to get around town in Tokyo was a harrowing adventure.

MariNaomi really does see Tokyo in an almost magical realist way, as everything from vending machines to pigeons in the park takes on a fantastical quality. The reality of day-to-day living starts to set in, as Mari takes a hostess job and Giuseppe is offered a host job at a strip club that would wind up paying him $20 a night after he took a cab home. Turning it down meant insulting the person who arranged it in the first place, which was a big deal. This was the first sign that a move made in America (turning down a potential job offer) that would have few consequences wound up being deeply offensive in Japan. The book settles down into a series of vignettes once again, but this time around it's not just about life as a hostess; Tokyo itself serves as a secondary character that reminds the couple of how different things are there. It also provokes a sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety, as MariNaomi realizes that learning Japanese from a bunch of drunk businessmen was not necessarily her best idea, and Giuseppe starts to evince resentment toward his fiancee. The one thing that the experience in Tokyo taught her was that the cultural divide, which valued deference to one's parents above all else no matter what, was something she couldn't begin to understand.

The final part of the book featured Mari visiting her grandparents, an occasion that was at once nostalgic and anxiety-ridden. She had wonderful childhood memories of her grandparents but had no idea if they would accept her or even if she would be able to communicate with them. She learned that no matter how much she struggled, she was able to pick up more of the language than she had guessed. The problem with that was she was now placed into the burden of translation for Giuseppe, who resented being left out of conversations. However, having to constantly translate conversations made communication extremely difficult and annoying for her, which allowed her to empathize with her mother a bit, who showed a similar level of annoyance about being forced out of the natural flow of conversation.

In a book about an experience that was supposed to be about transformation and getting closer to one's roots, the only genuine experience MariNaomi had in this regard was in a surprising area: prayer. A staunch atheist, she at first prayed at her grandmother's shrine in an effort not to offend her (silently cursing her own need to "conform"). Later when she went to a temple devoted to the prayers of parents for their sick children, MariNaomi was overwhelmed by the energy she perceived in the place. It didn't make her believe in god, per se, but she did acknowledge that prayer could be a way of releasing energy into the world. Though she doesn't make this connection overt in the book, that overwhelming, visceral feeling that she got from being in that environment was almost the polar opposite of the feeling she had during a panic attack. That's both in the sense of the energy she was receiving as well as sending in both instances as well as the way her body reacted each time.

It was also ironic that while MariNaomi found herself willing to compromise so many aspects of her identity, including her status as a feminist and an atheist, in order to keep the peace in particular social situations, she didn't think twice about not only telling her grandparents that she didn't want children, Not only did she say this, but she said it in a remarkably blunt manner ("Never! I don't like! Children make noise. I like quiet."). She didn't think for a moment that in a country obsessed by family ties, professing out-and-out hostility toward children (something she clearly rarely thought about, considering how rarely it even came up on her radar) might be the most upsetting and disrespectful thing possible. That unexamined hostility also sparked an argument with her fiancee, who wanted children and thought she might change her mind, creating all kinds of doubts in her mind and revealing one of the chief sources of his resentments toward her. While that bluntness had repercussions, it ultimately led to the right decision in terms of her relationship and (as she showed in an epilogue) didn't permanently erode her relationship with her grandparents. In the end, MariNaomi took what was useful from her experiences (empathy for her mom, sympathy for prayer) and rejected what wasn't (polite deference, obeying customs and conventions). MariNaomi's restraint as an artist is perhaps her best quality, both in terms of what she chooses to show on the page as well as the way she uses humor and quotidian anecdotes to act as a palate cleanser for the larger issues she opts to examine.

2dcloud: Gina Wynbrandt's Someone Please Have Sex With Me

Following up on my recent Minnesota post, let's take a look at one of Minneapolis's finest: 2dcloud. The publisher, Raighne Hogan, is a cartoonist in his own right, but he's made a splash thanks to his willingness to take risks with avant garde, eccentric and boundary-pushing comics. Hogan's put interesting work back in print, printed the work of locals, given homes to more-widely read cartoonists who needed a new publisher, published the work of emerging cartoonists and he's even gone the international route. At the moment, 2dcloud is running a kickstarter in an effort to support publishing some pretty remarkable books. First, here's a review of a recent publication.

Let's examine Gina Wynbrandt's collection of stories, Someone Please Have Sex With Me. Along with Sophie McMahan, Wynbrandt is very much in the Lisa Hanawalt school of using static images to create confrontational, hilarious and absurd scenarios. Whereas with Hanawalt's work sex was often present but never emphasized, Wynbrandt makes it a point to get in the reader's face regarding her desire and the various ways it has been thwarted. In that sense, Wynbrandt has a lot in common with Meghan Turbitt, another cartoonist who spins her own insecurities and desires into comics gold. Like Hanawalt, Wynbrandt is an extremely skilled illustrator with a naturalistic style that she warps for her own cartoony ends. Wynbrandt uses bulging eyes, flared nostrils and exposed teeth as her comedic arsenal, celebrating her own desire and personhood even as she creates ever-more-bizarre scenarios that appear self-deprecating on the surface.

"One Less Lonely Girl" sets the tone for the rest of the collection while at the same time is the most conventional story. Her younger sister encourages her to become interested in teen idol Justin Bieber, which starts a chain reaction of self-infantilization that is a running theme throughout the book. This story features her trying to get the attention of men her age (she's 21 years old and in college in this story) without having a clue as how to do so. There's a hilarious scene where a guy offers her a pretzel, which she takes as a sign of attraction, so she does her best to eat it as sensually as possible. Naturally, this provokes bafflement and alarm on his part. There's another funny scene where two skinny (naturally) female classmates babble on about their lives, and Wynbrandt meets them with a furious, silent glare: eyebrows furrowed, nostrils flared, eyes piercing like blades. Wynbrandt has further misadventures, including a disastrous party, before she receives an actual twitter reply from Bieber to an incredibly crude post she made. The resulting drawing of Wynbrandt in silhouette, jumping for joy, is hilarious.

As amusing as that story was, it's restrained compared to the rest of the book. "Tiger Beat Exclusive" starts off with Wynbrandt going full-bore in terms of her obsession with teen idols, which is emphasized when her mom tells her that "It's like, really creepy, Gina" and follows that up with an even creepier "I'm just trying to help you get laid". Like Turbitt, Wynbrandt is visited in this story by Kim Kardashian, who announces that she's her fairy godmother. There's the expected montage scene of shopping, makeup, wine-drinking and "industrial strength anal bleach". What helps push this story over the edge is that Wynbrandt keeps the gags flying on every single page, be they crazy drawings or absurd situations. She winds up going to the Teen Choice Awards (mistaken for "a very pregnant Kim Kardashian"), and there's a page of hilarious physical and facial contortions as she's desperate to "smell just ONE boy". Even her crisp, beautiful lettering plays a part in the storytelling, going from all uppercase to all lowercase as she's clawing at herself in ecstasy. Things continue to escalate on page after page, winding up in the Teen Choice Awards being burned to the ground and Wynbrandt winding up in Jamaica with Bieber ("meh....okay"). Using the framework of teen mags like the aforementioned Tiger Beat and celebrity mags like Us Weekly, Wynbrandt turns the vapid nature of the entire culture as fuel for laughs as she wants nothing more than to embrace all the frippery. Even the halfhearted acceptance she got was enough.

"Someone Please Have Sex With Me" is a far darker story, as it discusses the feeling of simultaneously not feeling desired by those she finds desirable while being targeted by creepy, unsavory men. It also points to the problematic nature of placing the entirety of one's self-esteem on whether or not someone will have sex with her. This story is a sort of career arc of sexual dysfunction, starting with an eight-year-old Wynbrandt selling Playboys to boys in high school to literally throwing herself at anyone who'd have her, with dialogue like "WOW, I drank an entire beer. ANYONE could take advantage of me right now." From there, Wynbrandt details a humiliating photo shoot where she's told to keep stuffing her face, a gym fantasy that turns into a gay orgy scenario, a scene in the future where she forces an employee to have sex with her in order to keep his job, getting a Pikachu-shaped sex robot when much older (only to have it self-destruct!), coming to terms with her problems on her death bed and then getting fucked by a demon in hell ("Hooray!") . Wynbrandt gets at the heart of her dilemma here: having her desire subjected to erasure, exploitation, and humiliation. The objects of her desire are also the source of her pain.

In the staggering "Big Pussy", Wynbrandt further identifies her other problem: her self-imposed perpetual adolescence. Instead of taking charge of her own sexuality, she surrenders it to these dream scenarios that never materialize, or even worse, are warped by those who take advantage of them. In this story, she is inspired by an anime character blossoming thanks to the tutelage of a talking cat, so she naturally seeks out her own talking cat. Amazingly, she winds up finding a bunch of feral cats with human faces who agree to train her after she pays them, and they have her perform a number of demeaning and disgusting tasks that center around feeding them (snapping a rat's neck), grooming them (not with a brush!), and in a page that defies any kind of polite description, gets fucked by them. That clinches her training and subsequent over-the-top bacchanal, which includes some amazing panels where she's snorting catnip. Wynbrandt is an artist who loves extrapolating beyond the obvious end of a story, and so she takes things to another level with her giving birth to a cat/human hybrid, and extends the joke one last time while tying it into the beginning of the story (where she mocks her inherent laziness and childish behavior) when she and her daughter later appear on Maury. Wynbrandt's willingness to go to any extreme for a joke is at its zenith here, and the varying shades of pink only add to the story's ridiculous atmosphere.

The final story, "Manhunt", sees Wynbrandt with a "boyfriend", i.e., a guy who fucks her and tells her to go away afterward. In the story, Wynbrandt exaggerates the slightest non-abusive behavior as exorbitantly generous, like giving her some gum. When he stops answering her calls, she turns to her "Palpable Loneliness" wishlist and she gets a recommendation for an x-rated video game featuring a female bounty hunter. What follows is ridiculous scenario after ridiculous scenario starring Wynbrandt as the hero, featuring a lifeguard, a librarian, go-go dancing, x-rated puzzles, choking an enemy, and finding a unique way to subdue her target. The "inspiration" she finds from the game goes down the drain when her hook-up texts her, with the overcooked text of "For a moment, I gave up on love. But love didn't give up on me" being a perfect recapitulation of how Wynbrandt's fantasy scenario was a product of romantic tropes she had been fed (and feeding on) her whole life, tropes that were impossible to fulfill in any real way. Wynbrandt is a force of nature as a cartoonist, evincing a fully-formed toolbox of drawing and storytelling skills, a razor-sharp sense of humor, and (contrary to the image she portrays) a powerfully developed sense of self. One other young cartoonist who comes to mind as a comparison is Nick Sumida, and that may well be the best match, given their youth, their ability to exploit popular culture and social media to specific ends, and their unflinching willingness to talk about their desires and how they are frustrated.

Catching Up With 2D Cloud

One of my favorite micropublishers is Minneapolis' 2D Cloud, spearheaded by Raighne Hogan and Justin Skarhus.  Let's take a look at their recent output.

Startled Maggie, by Meghan Hogan. This is a memory comic devoted to the artist's first memories, supplemented by the memories of her parents and others. It's charming in the way that anything a little kid does is charming, even when it's really obnoxious or disgusting. Hogan employs a scratchy, scribbly line that's expressive and unfussy, carrying the reader through gently captioned memories, milestones and adventures. The way Hogan draws her parents as having blank eyes behind their eyeglasses is almost as perfect as the way she draws herself: a crazy-haired curmudgeon with either a glint of mischief or a permanent scowl on her face. The panel captioned "Maggie gives orders now" features a scowling child yelling "OFF PHONE!". The other thing this comic captures so well is the seriousness of play. For a young child, play is an activity that requires intense concentration whose purpose is a kind of making or remaking of reality. Toward the end of the comic, as Maggie enters her toddler years, that scowl is replaced by a relentless sense of wonder, leading to amusing flights of fancy and endless questioning. It's an entirely accurate view of early childhood with an emphasis on the lighter side of a child's struggle to gain agency and control over her world.

Ablatio Penis, by Will Dinski. The stars and stripes and red, white and blue color scheme of the cover initially conceal the title of this comic, which is fitting considering it's all about what is concealed and why. Dinski, a long-time favorite of mine, loves to misdirect and redirect a reader's attention in interesting ways in his narratives, which is especially fitting here considering that the story is about an election. Taking no particular sides, Dinski details the machinations between charismatic Republicatn Andre St. Louis and dishwater dull democrat Susan Wallace. What's interesting about the two is that while both harbor deep secrets that could lose them the election, neither acts on that knowledge when grudge-holders pass it on to their campaigns. The secret that is revealed by an ex-girlfriend (despite his womanizing tendencies, he is a virgin) does indeed cost him the election, though the reason she does it is political, not personal (though as Dinski suggests, is there a difference?). Of course, his real secret, as suggested by the title (which means "detached penis") is never openly revealed, though it is strongly hinted at late in the book. A botched circumcision is what causes him to keep the many women attracted to him at arm's length, a secret known by only a few. In some ways, the end of the book is a shaggy dog joke, but Dinski constantly subverts expectations as to motives and gives new meaning to earlier scenes in the book when all is revealed. As always, Dinski's pacing and character design are both slightly eccentric, focusing on exaggerated, cartoony details as well as jamming a lot of panels on a single page while still leaving enough room for those individual panels to breathe. Telling the final third of the story through the eyes of a random person sitting in a diner was an especially inspired move, creating a narrative that's even more subjective and removed from the truth. "We can only know what we're shown" is the quote that concludes the book, and it sums up the ways in which St Louis lost and what secrets he was able to keep--and the price he paid. It also sums up how Wallace manages to win despite her own sordid history and robotic personal affect: what she didn't show got her elected moreso than what she did show. The difference between being and seeming has been a running theme throughout Dinski's career, and he adds an interesting layer of complexity to the subject in this book.

RDCD Fist #1.5, by Justin Skarhus. This wordless comic feels sort of a like a Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead version of the first issue of Skarhus' comic about exploring a space and the visceral and surreal nature of violence. A ghostly, spectral character emerges from a warped television image until it coalesces into a director's chair, prints out scripts and gives them to the waiting "actors" from RDCD Fist #1, eventually swirling to form the word "action" above its head. Skarhus is an interesting thinker, and I like the way he juxtaposes simplistic scenes of violence that are the core of most genre comics with a sort of phenomenology of the entire experience of exploring the space, experiencing the fight and watching the fight all at once, both as a "real" event and as a contrived ritual done for putative entertainment. That he manages to do this despite limited drawing ability makes it all the more impressive.

High Score, edited by Raighne Hogan. This is an anthology that's part of a Kickstarter incentive for a book by Rusel DeMaria of the same title, done in full color. It's about a variety of cultural experienced related to video games. Hannah Blumenreich writes of being a girl who wanted to play a video game at daycare but found herself shunned by boys. When she finally gets a chance to play, the boys are less than cooperative in showing her how to play. Her character design is especially effective here, emphasizing the hyperbolic qualities of children. Peter Wartman's comic about his German cousin wanting to play a "Medal of Honor" game in order to "kill German people" gets at the heart of the power of video games and why it's sometimes important to take a step back. Eric Schuster's 8-bit style history of the disastrous ET Atari game is hilarious and dovetails nicely with Saman Bernel-Benrud picking the story up when thousands of copies of the game were supposedly buried in a landfill in New Mexico. He imagines a scenario where the ET-shaped spirit of the game rises out of the landfill, shedding a tear at seeing kids play other games. Toby Jones contributes a typically amusing list of how his sedentary hobbies might look as video games, in contrast to the more active creator of key Wii games doing the same with his active hobbies. Finally, Hogan himself shows off his dazzling talent as a colorist with a variety of pages involving monsters and children. Overall, the anthology is best suited for gamers, which makes sense considering its original publishing history. It certainly bears the mark of a typically well-designed and eye-catching work from Hogan.

Eight Publishers To Seek Out At SPX 2012

First, I wanted to note that I will be attending the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, MD, this upcoming weekend (Saturday 8/15 and Sunday 8/16).  I will be moderating a panel on 8/15 at 11:30am called "British Comics: Does It Translate" featuring a number of UK creators and publishers, including Glyn Dillon (Shade The Changing Man, The Nao of Brown), Luke Pearson (Hildafolk, Everything We Miss), Sam Arthur (co-founder of NoBrow), Ellen Lindner (The Strumpet), and Nick Abadzis (Laika, Hugo Tate). Regular readers of my column will know that several of these artists have been long-time favorites of mine (I've been reading Lindner's comics for over a decade now) and others are new favorites.

There are any number of reasons to be excited by this year's iteration of SPX. Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine will make their first-ever appearances here. Mark Newgarden will be here screening some obscure animation. Francoise Mouly and the Hernandez Brothers will be making much-anticipated returns visits. There will be the usual exciting debuts from stalwarts like Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, Top Shelf and PictureBox (debuts from Sammy Harkham and Johnny Negron, among others) AdHouse (new books from Ethan Rilly AND Tom Herpich, among others). However, I wanted to shine a little light on several publishers who will be making their SPX debuts, as well as a couple of other important smaller publishers who continue to have a strong presence at the show. Their tables will be loaded with interesting books you may not have even heard of and will be jammed with representative artists.

1. Hic and Hoc. (Table H10) New Jersey's Matt Moses  (at right, above, with Pat Aulisio) is the publisher of this relatively new outfit focusing on collecting minicomics and webcomics, as well as new material. I'll have a big piece on them and a number of other smaller publishers at tcj.com soon, but I've enjoyed Moses' focus on gag and humor work, an area often ignored in the world of small press publishing. Lauren Barnett (Me Likes You Very Much) will be at this table, and she's up for Promising New Talent at the Ignatz Awards. My favorite book of Hic and Hoc's to date is The Complete Talamaroo, by Alabaster. This has just gone into a second edition, so there should be plenty of copies available at the show.

2. Koyama Press. (Tables J7-J10) Toronto-based Anne Koyama finally comes to SPX after several years of publishing extremely well received and highly eclectic comics in a variety of formats. Her table will be jam-packed with her artists and new debuts. Comics wunderkind Michael DeForge will make his SPX debut with the anticipated fourth issue of his comedy-horror series Lose. Julia Wertz joins Koyama Press with the debut of her book on her experience with illness, moving, bad jobs, libraries and other issues, The Infinite Wait (full disclosure: I wrote a blurb for this book). Fellow Old North Stater Dustin Harbin will debut the fourth issue of his Diary series. The Team Society League collective (Aaron Costain, John Martz, Steve Wolfhard, and Zach Worton) will be their with their Book of Answers. Koyama has an eye for developing talent while giving her artists total freedom, not unlike the way Dylan Williams used to run Sparkplug. She also has the well-earned reputation as being one of the nicest people in comics.

3. Retrofit Comics. (Table H14) Philadelphia's Brian "Box" Brown took a well-funded Kickstarter campaign to resurrect the alternative comic book in the form of a subscription service and has turned it into a publishing concern with some impressive books under its belt. Josh Bayer's Raw Power may well be the best of the bunch (a profile I did of Bayer's comics will be featured in the upcoming Studygroup Magazine #2), and he will be at SPX with four new minicomics. Brown will be debuting Flocks #1 by the increasingly prolific and confident L.Nichols and New Sludge City by up-and-comer Brendan Leach, as well as a new comic by himself called The Mark. Tom Hart will also have a couple of heartfelt and personal comics at the Retrofit table but will be repping his own Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) table with his wife and fellow teacher Leela Corman, who will no doubt have copies of her excellent book Unterzakhn.

4. NoBrow. (Tables A1-A2) This is one of the top British publishers, making their US debut. They're bringing one of their best artists in Luke Pearson, author of Hildafolk, Hilda and the Midnight Giant and Everything We Miss. Known for their illustration books as well as their comics, each of the publications is an art object unto itself, each with impeccable design. In addition to several beautiful anthologies, they also have a number of shorter, affordable books in their 17x23 series (I strongly recommend books by Jon McNaught) and also publish Jesse Moynihan's excellent Forming. Co-publisher Sam Arthur and Pearson will both be part of my British comics panel while fellow co-publisher Alex Spiro tends to the table. Any fan of beautiful-looking comics owes it to themselves to give their table a look; their house anthology NoBrow #6 is up for an Ignatz award.

5. Oily Comics. (Table I12) Chuck Forsman (left, above, with Alex Kim) has ambitiously started to recruit fellow artists to publish serialized minicomics for his new publishing concern, and the results have been beautiful thus far. In addition to his excellent The End Of The Fucking World, he's publishing Melissa Mendes' poignantly sweet Lou, Max De Radigues' Moose, and new comics by Aaron Cockle, Dane Martin, James Hindle, Jessica Campbell and more. He'll be sharing a table with fellow Sundays editors/contributors Kim, Joseph Lambert and several others. Fans of quality minicomics should essentially buy the whole lot, because there's not a loser in the bunch he's chosen to publish.

6. 2D Cloud. (Table W61) This small outfit from Minneapolis begun by Raighne Hogan (above, with his wife Meghan) has been quietly publishing beautiful art objects and introducing new and exciting talent for a few years now. They will be out in force at SPX with new releases from co-publisher Justin Skarhus (RDCD Fist #1.5) and newcomer Christopher Adams' Period. Their table will also feature Nicholas Breutzman (Yearbooks, Motherlover), Sharon Lintz (Pornhounds, which includes personal, riveting stories drawn by the likes of Breutzman, Lindner and others), Meghan Hogan (debuting her new comic) Vincent Stall (with Things You Carry) and Will Dinski, whose 2D Cloud debut is a comic called Ablatio Penis. They also published Noah Van Sciver's excellent Igntaz-nominated comic The Death of Elijah Lovejoy. I would also strongly recommend picking up a copy of Good Minnesotan #4, which was one of the better anthologies of the last couple of years.

6. Secret Acres. (Table J11-J12) The Brooklyn-based publisher consisting of Leon Avelino and Barry Matthews (left to right above, with Gabby Schulz in the middle) have been showing at SPX for many years and have racked up a number of Igntatz awards, and for good reason. This year, they'll have Mike Dawson in contention for an Ignatz with his excellent Troop 142 and also have the debut of Theo Ellsworth's new hardcover, The Understanding Monster. Sean Ford will be at the show as well with his recent completed Only Skin. Eamon Espey will also be there, and I would urge you to check out some of his disturbing, intense minicomics that will soon be collected. This publisher has always combined a sterling design sense with cartoonists who have singular aesthetic senses.

7. Sparkplug Comic Books. (Table W59) Publisher Tom Neely (above) will be repping Sparkplug for SPX, the first after Dylan Williams' death last year. Katie Skelly will also be at their table with her recent complete Nurse Nurse, the first book Sparkplug has published since Dylan died. As always, Sparkplug always has a table full of marvelous minicomics discoveries thanks to their status as a major distributor of minis, and this year will be no exception. Be sure to check out Neely's own unique works, like The Blot, The Wolf, his anthology Bound & Gagged and his part in the amazing Henry and Glenn Forever. Tessa Brunton's Passage was nominated for an Ignatz, and she's also up for Promising New Talent.

8. Hidden Fortress Press. (Table C8) This is the name of Paul Lyons' (above, with Cheryl Kaminsky) publishing concern, and this former member of Fort Thunder will be debuting the new issue of Monster. This is one of the best of all alt-comics anthologies, pushing the line between fine arts and comics in a horror genre context. This will be one of the potential "book of the show" choices. Kaminsky, Roby Newton and possibly Brian Ralph will also be at this table.

Anthologies: Little Heart

2D Cloud's Kickstarter-funded anthology Little Heart is uneven as far as the quality of its contributions goes, though in some respects that's beside the point. A portion of the book's proceeds went to [MN]Love, a nonprofit dedicated to marriage equality in Minnesota. As an adopted North Carolinian, enduring the results of Amendment One this past year was disgraceful, as it made so-called "marriage protections" part of the state constitution. Until the US Supreme Court rules otherwise, more states are in danger of having to deal with these barbaric and discriminatory practices. As such, one can forgive that some of the entries in this anthology either aren't comics or else display more enthusiasm than skill.

Let's take a closer look at the stories themselves. One thing that I liked about the anthology is that there was no specific requirement for the contributors to make their story about gay marriage. Indeed, a number of the stories are personal accounts from people who are single or have no desire to get married. I thought two of the better (if on-the-nose) stories came from Virginia Paine and Maurice Vellekoop, respectively. Paine talked about that even when she dated men, she never thought of marriage as an attractive option, but did say that having a choice like anyone else is important.Vellekoop, the great Canadian illustrator, interviews some friends after nearly a decade of equal access under the law in his country. It's a fascinating piece and a nice capstone to the book, as some of his friends discuss the pros and cons of marriage as well as their own mixed feelings about the institution. A couple of his friends felt it was too imitative of the straight world (a quite common claim), while others liked the idea of being part of an ancient institution and making it their own. It's a fascinating discussion of some finer points of the experience that many don't think about, drawn in Vellekoop's trademark angular, attractive style.

A couple of stories were personal accounts of deciding to get married, focusing in on specific aspects of the experience. For Emily Carroll and Kate Craig, their story focused on the simple engagement ring purchased online, which had an inscription from another couple. It's a simple sentiment, wondering about who these people were but focusing more on the present. Mari Naomi's account of proposing to her husband was more complicated, as she spoke to one queer friend whose less than enthusiastic "How nice for you, that you're able to do that" spoke to the divide between gay and bi individuals as well as the dilemma many hetero partners feel when they think about marrying. That said, the sheer enthusiasm and nervousness comes through on every page, and the splash page featuring the proposal was nicely understated, as Mari Naomi puts the image of her proposing in the bottom left hand corner, surrounded by tons of white space.

Some of the strips focus less on the idea of marriage than the experience of being queer and exploring that identity.Alex Fukui's "Footsie" for example, is a painful example of having desperate yearnings as a young person and wondering if someone you have a crush on is interested in as well, with the added layer of total fear about being a teen and being gay. Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe's "Roosterlegs" is by far the best-looking strip in the book thanks to the bold, confident lines, clever character design and interesting use of spot color. It's a strip about a young person trying to investigate the realities of what being queer means in nature and exploring the possibility of trans identity.

Other stories focus on being alone vs being with someone and the sacrifices one makes in either scenario. Christopher Adams' evocative silent story about a priest going about his day, hanging out with members of his congregation, speaks to the nature of the solitude of his position and the peace he has ultimately made with it. Hannah Blumenreich's story of a lovable pre-teen oddball who earnestly believes that she is psychic is endearing precisely because of her lack of self-awareness, even as she makes subtle shifts in attitude when reality dictates it. Joseph Remnant's excellent story about a guy crushing hard on a girl he sees at a bookstore and subsequently talks to at an art show is funny because of the quite deranged nature of obsessiveness overriding reason. The fact that this story gets a happy doesn't feel like a cheat so much as an indication that the leads occupied the same place in their circle of friends and really did find out by accident that they were perfect for each other. Noah Van Sciver's account of Richard & Mildred Loving's struggle to have their mixed-race marriage accepted in the south is especially poignant given that their union was opposed on many of the same supposed moral grounds as gay marriage is today. Jeremy Sorese's story about his divorced parents remarrying provides the structure for his own mixed feelings about marriage in an elegant and stylish series of highly stylized images. He gets at an interesting point: even if gay marriage is a big deal, why should a 23 year old be worrying about marriage anyway?

Most of the other stories are pleasant enough, if forgettable. I thought the inclusion of spot illustrations didn't do much to strengthen the anthology, especially since few of them were especially memorable. The handwritten coming-out story of Tammy Ray was impassioned but wasn't really comics, and Rachel Kowarski's poem did not fit at all. Editor Raighne Hogan likes to take risks in his anthologies and errs on the side of leaving in submissions that perhaps should have been cut. He leaves it up to the reader to decide their worth, which is admirable, but I'd love to see him exercise a firmer editorial hand. Of course, this anthology wasn't necessarily the place to do so, and erring on the side of enthusiasm in this case made sense. There's no question that it's a beautifully designed book, as all 2D Cloud projects tend to be, and I hope that it makes a difference.

Another Worthy Kickstarter Effort: Motherlover

I'd urge interested parties to donate to the Kickstarter fund for Motherlover, an anthology featuring Nic Breutzman, John Holden and Luke Holden. It's edited and colored by Raighne Hogan, whose 2D Cloud will be publishing it. I wrote the introduction to the book, which is unsettling and beautiful.

Cleansed: The Death Of Elijah Lovejoy

Noah Van Sciver's The Death of Elijah Lovejoy is his single strongest work to date, especially in terms of his art. Before I get to the content, let's discuss the design and presentation. The mini was published by Minneapolis' 2D Cloud, the folks behind the excellent Good Minnesotan minicomics anthology series and much of Nic Breutzman's output. Unsurprisingly, they put a lot of care into this comic, with publisher/editor Raighne Hogan supplying the lurid, vivid colors for the cover. The comic was printed by La Mano, Zak Sally's own press. The quality of the paper and hand-made nature of the printing process make this a beautiful little art object. For an artist like Van Sciver, who does a lot of cross-hatching and employs a lot of thick blacks, the ink has an almost visceral quality on the page. I hope that more publishers turn to Sally for printing, given that comics are becoming more and more of a niche item; the tactile nature of the paper & ink provide value added that can't be matched by reading it on a digital device.


With regard to the comic itself, Van Sciver is carving out an interesting niche doing historical fiction. His story about "The Denver Spider-Man" that appeared in Mome as well as the first chapter of his Joseph Smith story indicate an interest in obsessive and fanatical historical figures. In Van Sciver's hands, such a characterization is not necessarily a pejorative. The Death Of Elijah Lovejoy concerns a midwestern abolitionist in the 1830s who published a radical newspaper that denounced slavery from a moral (and explicitly Christian) standpoint. Lovejoy's editorials denouncing a lynching provoked local mobs to destroy three of his printing presses. The comic opens with a mob cornering Lovejoy and his publisher in a building that housed the press.



The rest of the comic is devoted to Lovejoy's failed defense of his press from a mob of thirty armed fanatics. The manic intensity of Van Sciver's cross-hatching and the slightly grotesque quality of his figure work perfectly encapsulated the deranged quality of the mob and the desperate, upright defense of the Lovejoy & his friends. The comic is a procedural on how the staff defended themselves, improvising desperate plans on the spot that beat back the first wave of assassins before falling to the inevitable and chillingly bloodthirsty mandate of the mob. Again, it's the details and richness of the printing process that make the huge droplets of sweat and bloody smudges pop out on the page, depicting the shattering nature of the event in all its ugliness.



Van Sciver notes that while Lovejoy was nearly helpless sacrificing his life for his beliefs and freedom of the press, his murder established him as a martyr for the abolitionist cause and was a key event in the run-up to the Civil War. The story and its ideas are simple, but Van Sciver brings it to life with his attention to detail, given the impeccable quality of the period dress, weapons, buildings and equipment. That's why the one flaw in this comic drove me crazy: Van Sciver's spelling errors. It's especially disappointing given that Van Sciver had an editor for this comic and that the comic was otherwise so painstaking in doing the little things right. That said, I hope to see Van Sciver continuing to work with 2D Cloud, because their care and attention make this the best-looking comic of his career. As Van Sciver's voice and line continue to grow in confidence, he deserves to be published in this kind of format.

The Betrayal of Dreams: Yearbooks

Rob reviews the new comic by Nicholas Breutzman, Shaun Feltz and Raighne Hogan, YEARBOOKS (2D Cloud).



Nick Breutzman is an artist I've been vaguely aware of for quite some time. I know he was part of the CRITICAL CITADEL crew and he had the strongest story in the latest issue of up-and-coming anthology GOOD MINNESOTAN. On the basis of that story, I was excited to hear about his first book, YEARBOOKS. Breutzman drew it and co-wrote it (with Shaun Feltz), while Raighne Hogan did the colors. This is more of a novella than "graphic novel", given its length (40 pages) and overall concision in its storytelling. The one word that describes Breutzman's stories best is "dread". He has a way of coming up with an atmosphere of impending doom and pain that is more tense than any actual depiction of horrific deeds.

YEARBOOKS has a look and feel that seems to borrow from a number of sources, yet eventually come up with a perspective that is entirely Breutzman's. The coldness of the narrative reminds me a bit of Dan Clowes. The slightly grotesque and exaggerated depiction of the characters is not unlike Lauren Weinstein, down to the vivid (and deliberately garish) color scheme of Hogan. The dream sequences remind me of the sort of thing Dash Shaw might do. However, Breutzman's view of humanity and the way people interact in high school is far more grim and unsparing than any of those artists; if anything, he has more in common with filmmaker Todd Solondz. There's a similar distrust of the motives of all people, but especially those in authority.



The book begins with a creepy dream sequence featuring a teacher turning into a bat-creature and shooting guano all over them, as the skies outside darkened ominously. We then meet Ryan, a teen near the bottom of the brutal power hierarchy that is high school as he negotiates a particular day. He has an odd but compelling bond with his art teacher, who starts to show him some truly disturbing work from earlier in his career. He had avoided showing them to his acolyte until Ryan started to think he was a poser and started to avoid him. Ryan starts to get a hint as to what his teacher is all about when he sees the merciless eye that created these drawings from life, but it isn't until he sees his teacher with his best friend and starts to put together the nature of their relationship that the full horror of what he saw sinks in. We then cut back to the dream from the beginning, whose portentious tones have given way to all-out disaster as children are drowned in a schoolhouse thanks to actions by the teacher.

One reason why the story was so effective and chilling was that there was no resolution beyond Ryan's newfound understanding of a situation he didn't want to know anything about. Instead, we slip directly back into a nightmare sequence. Part of the horror of what's implied at the end for Ryan is the level of trust he had in this teacher and the way he identified with him. This was someone Ryan wanted to emulate, wanting to know more about his life and career. The teacher was resistant to this form of connection because he knew that he wasn't really a worthy choice as a mentor, but was desperate to create some form of validation for his career (and as a human being)--and recast a younger artist in his own image. It was telling that whenever Ryan started to non-judgementally raise certain moral issues related to the art, the teacher became defensive and even witholding. When the full picture of his teacher started to coalesce, it was as much a judgment on Ryan's own choices as it was on the teacher.

Breutzman's visuals tell the story effortlessly. His character design, body language, use of gesture and unusual placement of panels give the reader subtext and a richer understanding of the story's ultimate emotional resolution. Breutzman also raises an interesting issue vis-a-vis the relationship between an artist and their responsibilities as a moral agent in the world. Can art be evil if it's made by predators, or is this entirely in the eye of the beholder? These questions are raised but not explicitly answered, but what is unquestionably true is that the experience brought an end to what was left of Ryan's innocence. It's one thing to survive high school when you have the carrot of college waiting at the end and a new life. It's quite another when you've been told that the person you want to become is a monster--and it may be too late to stop.